The collected works of Lana Brindley: writer, speaker, blogger

OMG, my ACL! Second week

I saw my GP again on Tuesday morning (12 days after the injury), and we decided that going to a private surgeon at this point would be a good idea. Waiting times for ACL surgery through the public system can apparently be six months or more, and I was eager to get back on my feet. By this point, I could fully weight bear on my bad leg, and had ditched the crutches for my trusty cane (which I bought years ago when I hurt my calf muscle, and was quite pleased to be able to put back into service). My knee was still swollen, although it was going down ever so slowly, and I still had zero stability in the knee, although that’s not terribly surprising.

I was referred through to QCOS at the Wesley, and I secured an appointment with Dr. Davies on Thursday (14 days after injury). By the time I saw Dr Davies, I was hobbling quite effectively on my peg leg (remember, my brace was still locked straight at this point), and could do a few steps in a straight line without relying on my cane.

The first thing Dr. Davies did was look at my MRI and explain the injury to me. He showed me where the meniscus was torn, and where my ACL wasn’t. For my part, I did my best not to throw up on his desk. He then examined my knee, pushing and poking to work out how much give there was in the joint (spoiler: too much), and asked me to bend my leg as far as possible. At that point, I could get to a very uncomfortable 50° or so. It’s hard to describe the feeling, but it’s almost dry, like there’s no lubrication in my knee, and there’s a lot of pressure on the joint when I bend it.

Dr. Davies then unlocked my brace to 60°, prescribed me to see my physio twice a week, and booked me in for surgery for 19 June. I had four weeks to build my leg muscles back up, and get full range of motion. This, I will note at this point, was in direct contravention of what the physios at the hospital told me. Dr. Davies was polite about them, but I won’t be. They gave me bad advice, and set my recovery back by at least a week by telling me not to move my leg, or to keep working on range of motion. Additionally, locking your knee straight puts pressure on the ligaments that are trying to heal (they are at rest at around 30°), so it’s counter productive. If you get told this, seek an opinion from another physio.

So at this point, two weeks after the injury, I finally had a plan for getting on my feet again! Four weeks until surgery, six weeks rehab afterwards, nine to twelve months before I was fully back to normal. It seemed like forever.

Where the bloody hell are ya?!

Who wrote all this stuff?

All writing on this blog is the work of Lana Brindley and does not necessarily reflect the view of Rackspace, OpenStack, or any other group with which I am affiliated, except where I have used direct quotes (which are attributed to the original authors where possible). All images were either taken by me, shared under their individual licencing requirements, or obtained as stock photography.